In time history must become a fairy tale—it will become again what it was in the beginning.

—Novalis, c. 1798

Do not lessen the time of following desire, for the wasting of time is an abomination to the spirit.

—Ptahhotep, c. 2350 BC

Nothing puzzles me more than time and space, and yet nothing puzzles me less, for I never think about them.

—Charles Lamb, 1810

Time, when it is left to itself and no definite demands are made on it, cannot be trusted to move at any recognized pace. Usually it loiters, but just when one has come to count upon its slowness, it may suddenly break into a wild irrational gallop.

—Edith Wharton, 1905

The past is always tense and the future, perfect.

—Zadie Smith, 2000

Those who make the worst use of their time are the first to complain of its brevity.

—Jean de La Bruyère, 1688

We wish away whole years, and travel through time as through a country filled with many wild and empty wastes, which we would fain hurry over, that we may arrive at those several little settlements or imaginary points of rest which are dispersed up and down in it.

—Joseph Addison, 1711

There is no work of human hands which time does not wear away and reduce to dust.

—Marcus Tullius Cicero, 46 BC

If both what is before and what is after are in this same “now,” things which happened ten thousand years ago would be simultaneous with what has happened today, and nothing would be before or after anything else.

—Aristotle, c. 330 BC

A watch is always too fast or too slow. I cannot be dictated to by a watch.

—Jane Austen, 1814

The celestial machine is to be likened not to a divine organism but rather to a clockwork.